Logging and Mining
Industries Target Public Schools

by John
Borowski

July 3, 2002

A
Ford Motor Company donation of $1.5 million dollars to "Provider
Pals" epitomizes the quest by extractive industries and their spawn to
conquer society's last, un-commercialized bastion: our public school system.
Provider Pals is the latest attempt to run the gauntlet and blow wide open the
proverbial doors of fairness, objectivity, and sound science found in schools
and replace it with nothing short of corporate America's wish list. And that
list has a long history of distortions, half-truths, and bold-faced lies.

Provider Pals,
organized by Bruce Vincent, a mouthpiece for logging, mining and grazing on
public lands, is brilliantly orchestrated with a charismatic, yet simple
objective. Put a face on miners, loggers and ranchers: a very happy face
indeed. Bringing his minstrel show to urban areas, Vincent and his happy band
of "providers" apparently show the "city kiddies" how wood,
meat and other resources are brought to the market. Central to this theme, is
the pretext that no good American would criticize American icons like the
cowboy and logger. Industry has often used workers as pawns; millions of
dollars were spent on the timber corporation's PR ploy to pit loggers versus
Spotted Owls. Loggers were not the bad guys, it was the likes of Boise Cascade and
Weyerhaeuser who butchered millions of acres of watersheds, fragmented forests
on a scale never seen before and used "cut and run" techniques caring
little about workers and their communities.

The irony of
programs like Provider Pals is while they tug at our 'heart-strings', and have
a valid message in terms of good, hard working rural folk, the omissions in the
classroom are akin to a corporate commercial. Will the urban kids be made privy
to information about predator control and vile, toxic substances like Compound
1080 (one of the world's most lethal chemicals) that are used by grazing
interests to destroy our nation's predators? Will the logger character discuss
the fact that only 4% of our native forests still stand, that tree farms and
massive clear-cutting have lead to our current fire dangers? Will the miner
expose the 1872 Mining Law, which leads to legal theft of hard-rock minerals,
while companies pay no royalties and the public picks up the cost of abandoned
mines? On all cases, the answer is very doubtful.

The Wood
Promotion Network suggests on their website that the Ford donation is an
attempt by the auto giant to make nice with extractive industries. Or as the
website gleefully notes, "the initiatives are part of Ford's earlier
commitment resulting from an overwhelming response to advertorials and previous
grants by the Ford Fund that damaged the reputation of wood and the wood
industry on product and environmental issues." A Ford donation to the
National Audubon was seen as an immoral act by those "Wise Use folks"
who cannot fathom a rational discussion on environmental issues, unless it is
crafted, tailored and pigeon holed to fit industry's set of myths about
resource abuse, and their age old denial of being nothing more than shysters.

But if a
puppet show doesn't work, Mr. Vincent can follow the lead of the American
Petroleum Institute. Exposed by the N.Y Times for trying to create"junk
science" curricula, to downplay global warming, and cast the Kyoto
Protocol into the same category as leprosy, API tried the clandestine route:
seek cover from an established charlatan. They helped fund a module on energy
for Project Learning Tree, an educational program funded by the American Forest
Foundation. Project Learning Tree, fond of ignoring forest issues like clear
cutting, monocultures, short rotation forestry, the track record of
multinationals on public lands, is a powerful player in environmental education
with the backing of the nation's most powerful and ecologically unsound timber
corporations. In the absence of big environmental organizations providing sound
curricula, teachers are being bamboozled into using PLT materials and its'
omission filled agenda.

Sitting on the
"panel" for this illustrious energy packet was the American Coal Foundation,
the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute.
API president Red Cavaney sat on the panel himself, and he is an avid supporter
of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The American Coal Foundation
has been chastised for their previous foray into science curricula. "Power
from Coal" was cited by educators as commercial and incomplete,
downplaying the effects of carbon dioxide and actually suggested the earth
could "benefit rather than be harmed from increased carbon dioxide."
Lastly, the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers is fighting California's attempt to
regulate emissions from cars to combat global warming. Now there is nothing
like adding rogues to your existing "Rogues Gallery" to circumvent a
fair and even discussion on pressing environmental issues like energy?

And if all
fails, go the "Operation Greenout" route. Gestated in Oregon,
Operation Greenout uses inflammatory rhetoric to castigate environmental
education. Literacy in environmental issues is depicted as "eco-child
abuse" and "indoctrination". Earth Day is seen as the unholy
celebratory date for druids and the Lorax. Several times in their literature
they coldly warn us, "You cannot trust the greens." Deeper inspection
of their data suggests that they are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Wise
Use movement. Yes, it is a shrill and transparent approach, yet fear is a
wonderful motivator.

While the fortress of public
schools, have withstood these attacks, the cracks are showing. Growing state
deficits means less funding for curricula. Educators are being tempted to use
corporate curricula that offer a "fast food approach" to learning:
the questions and answers are the best that industry can cook up, similar to
corporate profit sheets and exaggerated financial gains. Corporate America
knows as long as students have literacy in environmental issues, there will
always be Rachel Carson and Cesar Chavez types in the American lexicon. And
that is not permissible in a corporate run world, were knowledge is seen as a
roadblock to quarterly profits.

Yes, it must
be frustrating for certain corporations. They have unfettered access to the
airways, given their monopoly on the television. Their pockets are deep and
massive sums of money can be afforded to propaganda campaigns. American culture
is increasingly being dictated by our citizens' dizzying compliance to
fulfilling their ego and spiritual satisfaction through consumption and paying
less and less heed to meaningful dialogue about the consequences. But, there
has always been that outpost of hope, a roadblock if you will, that prevents
free education from becoming "owned and paid for education."

Our public
schools offer our youngest citizens access to scientific information not
tainted or presented with outcomes already determined. Discussion and critical
thinking, in the absence of corporate come-ons, will determine the best
possible road to sustaining resources for eons to come. And if this bastion
gives way to the knaves who would manipulate their own mothers to generate
greater stock options, then, we as a free and just society will see democracy
erode and blow away as so much dust found in a clearcut, overgrazed prairie or
neglected strip-mine.

John
Borowski has taught high school environmental science for 24 years.
His articles have appeared in the NY Times, "Z" magazine, and UTNE
Reader. He lives in Philomath, Oregon and can be reached at: jenjill@proaxis.com